Philippines' Kickstart Ventures, Inc joins GSMA Mobile Asia Expo innovation workshop in Shanghai, China. The workshop tackled current initiatives to foster and promote new ways of doing
things.
GSMA is an association of mobile operators
and related companies devoted to supporting the standardizing, deployment and
promotion of the GSM mobile telephone system.
On the topic of "Creating Innovation
from Within - Fostering Mobile Innovation," Kickstart President Minette
Navarrete joined Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Senior Advisor, Softbank Mobile
Corporation; Guillaume Mascot, Director of Public Affairs, Alcatel-Lucent; and
Paul Haswell, Partner, Pinsent Masons in discussing some of the global and
regional trends taking place in the industry. Professor Xu Yan, Associate Dean
of the HKUST Business School, moderated.
The panelists also talked about the
important role of innovation as well as opportunities for new business models
and partnerships, and the role of the private and public sectors.
Using Globe Telecom as an example,
Navarrete explained how Kickstart, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe, was
created to break down barriers to disruptive innovation that could not survive
inside an established telecom company.
“Kickstart challenges existing norms and
takes active part in accelerating the development of robust innovation
ecosystem. Globe knows that the world is
changing and it’s not enough to only be in mobile because people want to do
different things. It is important that
we provide them with tools, channels, mentors and market access. Globe has all
these assets, but we also know that innovation has to be moreswift, agile, and
open to changing very, very fast, at a rate that a large established
corporation would be hard-pressed to achieve.
That’s why Kickstart was born,” she said.
Kickstart is an incubation and investment
company which helps tech startups operating in the Philippines to build robust
businesses and technical foundations, as well as to scale. Kickstart does this
by putting big company resources - capital, facilities, expertise, and business
connections - behind the startups that it funds so they can launch faster and
achieve scale and profitability sooner. These resources are available to
Kickstart through its parent company, Globe Telecom, and its major
shareholders, Ayala Corporation and Singtel.
According to Navarrete, large enterprises
are good at driving and scaling innovation through reliable, repeatable
processes but it is much less successful for the frontier areas of industry
where there are higher, often unquantifiable degrees of uncertainty and risk.
Thus, Globe mandated Kickstart to spur
innovation by providing digital startup companies with capital, mentorship, and
market access to make it possible for large and small corporations to work
together.
“Innovation requires an ecosystem approach:
we must create an integrated innovation ecosystem in the Philippines. The digital space is interesting because it
can be deployed very quickly and doesn’t need huge capital, qualities that make
it well-suited to starting in emerging markets, and scaling to the world. We break down barriers by giving startups the
cash to help them reduce their risks and start their entrepreneurial
journey. We build bridges by bringing in
mentors and offering training that’s very specific to their needs. We bring in the people and the large private
and public sector organizations who can contribute,” she said.
Kickstart currently has 18 portfolio
companies with product and services ranging from e-commerce, social enterprise,
crowd sourcing, prepaid credits, party invites, skills matching, loans, online
journal, clinic management, legal research, dating, bilingual educational,
carpooling, travel, real estate, management tool, and loyalty promotions.